


Your room is a mess

by exuberant_imperfection



Series: Talk to me [2]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Happy birthday Scarlet!!!, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-27
Updated: 2015-11-27
Packaged: 2018-05-03 16:57:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5299136
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/exuberant_imperfection/pseuds/exuberant_imperfection
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's an uphill battle, but Kuroko tries his best to help Aomine fight it.</p><blockquote>
  <p>Aomine’s voice was much smaller than usual, and so lost. “I thought everything was gonna be okay. I thought, for once…” He paused and took a breath, and when he continued again his voice was shaking. “…Well, it’s not. It’s not. It’s—it’s getting bad again and I don’t know what to do. Tetsu, I don’t know what to do.”</p>
</blockquote>
            </blockquote>





	Your room is a mess

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Blue1926](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blue1926/gifts).



> Happy belated birthday to Scarlet!!! <3 Sorry it's so late, but I hope you had a great day. :D

“Aomine-kun, your room is a mess,” Kuroko said with a frown as he walked in.  
  
“Oh, shut it,” Aomine replied grumpily, toeing aside a pile of dirty clothes in their path. (Well… they might have been clean, actually. He’d have to smell to check.) “My parents are giving me enough shit, I don’t need to hear it from you, too.”  
  
Kuroko arched an eyebrow at him. “Clearly you do.”  
  
Aomine flopped onto his bed… after shoving the pile of random stuff off of it to make room for himself. “No, I don’t.”  
  
On the way over to join him, Kuroko eyed the mounds of clothes, the trash and crumpled schoolwork strewn about, and the many dishes in various stages of decay and molding. “Aomine-kun, this is unhealthy.”  
  
“Oh come _on_ , Tetsu, I’ve always been messy!” Aomine said with a sigh of exasperation, staring at the ceiling. “What makes this any different?”  
  
Kuroko finally made his way to the bed and sat down next to him. “It’s never been this bad before,” he said quietly, surveying the room once more before turning to look down at Aomine.  
  
Honestly, beyond even the simple fact that the room was cluttered and unkempt, Kuroko was concerned by how much Aomine… _matched_ its appearance. From the way he was sprawled lazily over his bed, to the dull look in his eyes that didn't go away no matter how much Kuroko managed to make him smile, Aomine looked like a natural part of the mess.  
  
He seemed to tense, looking up at Kuroko with an expression he couldn’t quite read. “Yeah,” he answered vaguely, averting his eyes.  
  
Kuroko’s irritation abated at that and he lay down beside Aomine, lacing their fingers together and squeezing his hand reassuringly. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, because he wasn’t really sure what else to say, even after all this time.  
  
“No, don’t—” Aomine paused and sighed. “Look, it’s just—I know it’s bad, okay? I know.” His voice lost its edge, becoming more hesitant. “If I could… If I knew how to make it better, I would.”  
  
“I know,” Kuroko replied, almost whispering now. “Me too.”  
  
After a few minutes of sitting there silently holding hands, Kuroko rolled over to kiss his cheek softly, then got up and rooted around the room until he found Aomine’s favorite movie. He  put it in the DVD player and pressed play before returning to Aomine, snuggling up to him, and pulling the blankets over them both. When he next glanced over at Aomine’s face, he was gratified to see a little smile there, and took that for the small victory it was.  


* * *

  
The next morning, Kuroko found himself stirring awake much earlier than he’d expected for a sleepover with Aomine.  
  
“I _am_ hurrying, Satsuki,” he heard Aomine saying, and cracked his eyes open to see him wandering rather unhurriedly around his room, occasionally stopping to root through a pile of clothes. “…Not unless you want me to show up in dirty clothes. … I _do_ , just give me a few damn seconds of peace to find them! … Whatever. Bye.”  
  
Kuroko yawned and propped himself up on his elbows. “Aomine-kun?” he said, his voice scratchy from sleepiness.  
  
Aomine swiveled around to face him, phone still in hand. “Oh, uh, sorry, didn’t mean to wake you up.” He walked over and sat down on the bed with a sigh. “For some stupid reason, they decided to start practice like three hours earlier than usual today, so I gotta go.” He reached forward to run a hand through Kuroko’s hair, pushing his bangs back to kiss his forehead. “You can keep sleeping if you want, though. You’ve got time.”  
  
“No I can… get up with you—” Kuroko tried to insist, but cut off with another yawn.  
  
Aomine laughed at him and gently pushed him back down onto the pillows, leaning over him with a grin. “Stop being so damn cute and go to sleep already before I decided to say ‘fuck it’ and skip practice,” he said, kissing him.  
  
“Don’t do that,” Kuroko mumbled against his lips before kissing him back. He let it happen for a bit, enjoying the warm weight of Aomine on top of him, but once Aomine’s hands began to wander and a little moan slipped out past Kuroko’s lips, he decided that was probably enough, pushing Aomine away. “Go to practice,” he insisted, perhaps more weakly than he wanted to since he was slightly out of breath and heat was rising to his face.  
  
“Don’t wanna,” Aomine murmured, trailing kisses down Kuroko’s jaw and throat, and Kuroko barely suppressed another moan, sighing in pleasure instead.  
  
Reluctantly, he put a hand on Aomine’s face and shoved him away again. “Aomine-kun. Go.” And, certain that wouldn’t be enough, he added, “We can finish this later.”  
  
Aomine frowned at being pushed away, batting Kuroko’s hand aside, but then grinned. “Oh, I will,” he said, and the combination of his low, velvety voice and predatory smirk sent a shiver down Kuroko’s spine. And then Aomine leaned froward and gave him one last searing kiss, slow and deep and not lasting nearly as long as Kuroko wanted it to. He almost whimpered when Aomine pulled away and added, “That’s a promise.”  
  
And then he got up off of Kuroko and stripped to his boxers _before_ continuing his search for clean clothes, and at that point Kuroko felt the need to protest. “I hate you.”  
  
“You’re the one making me go to practice,” Aomine said, smugly taking his sweet time wandering around nearly naked.  
  
Kuroko said nothing, only made a small frustrated noise and watched as Aomine eventually found clean clothes, put them on, and headed for the door.  
  
“See you later, Tetsu,” Aomine said, turning to grin brightly at him before walking out.  
  
Left alone, Kuroko considered going back to sleep, but he was far too awake for that now. So he sat there for a moment, quietly missing Aomine’s warmth, thinking fondly about his bright smile and the fire in his eyes… but the dark, stuffy air in the room weighed down on him, and he couldn’t help but feel heartbroken at the idea that Aomine’s light was suffocated like this so often. As he looked around at the mess, he slowly came to a decision, typing out a text to Kagami.  
  
_Please inform our team that I will not be attending practice today._  
  
_dude wtf??? coach’s gonna be pissed_  
  
_Please convey my deepest apologies._  
  
_u owe me 4 this u asshole_  
  
_Thank you, Kagami-kun._  
  
And with that, Kuroko pushed himself up off the bed, laid his phone on the bedside table, and set to work cleaning Aomine’s room. It took him a while to figure out where to start, but eventually he fetched several large garbage bags from the kitchen and began by tackling the trash and dishes. He filled two bags with trash and filled another with dirty dishes, hauling them downstairs to wash.  
  
Aomine’s mother walked into the kitchen while he was doing that.  
  
“Tetsu-chan? What are you still doing here? Don’t you have practice, too?” she asked, heading to the coffeemaker to refill the mug she clutched in her hands.  
  
“It got canceled,” Kuroko lied, then glanced up politely at her. “Aomine-kun told me I could stay here while he was at practice. Is that alright with you, Aomine-san?”  
  
“Of course, I don’t mind at all!” Aomine’s mother reassured him. A teasing smile crossed her face. “You can stay as long as you’d like if you’re going to do chores.”  
  
Kuroko gave a tiny little chuckle. “I’ll keep that in mind if I ever need a place to stay.”  
  
She laughed as well. “You _should_ come live with us. Daiki is much more pleasant to deal with when you’re around.” Then, nodding towards the stack of dirty dishes in the sink, she added, “I can’t _believe_ he would make you do his chores.”  
  
Kuroko shook his head. “He didn’t tell me to.”  
  
She just looked at him for a moment before she spoke. “He doesn’t know how lucky he is,” she said, sighing. “I won’t tell you not to do it, but… he really should be learning how to take care of himself, you know. You’re spoiling him.”  
  
Kuroko shrugged and gave a non-committal hum. “Everyone should be spoiled every once in a while… But, I’ll keep that in mind, Aomine-san,” he said, smiling politely before looking back down to resume washing the dishes.  
  
She paused, then laughed again. “Alright, whatever you say, Tetsu-chan,” she said, turning to leave the room. “Let me know if you need anything.”  
  
“Thank you, Aomine-san.”  
  
She walked out and Kuroko was alone again, scrubbing a particularly moldy plate with vigor, an unrelated troubled expression on his face. No one in Aomine’s family seemed to understand what was going on with him. Of course, Aomine hadn’t confided in them—when he had finally opened up to Kuroko, he mentioned only Momoi knew—but it was still disheartening to see Aomine’s own mother dismissing his laziness as a vice, rather than wondering if there was maybe something wrong.  
  
_They were lying in the grass under a starry sky, bathed in the moon’s silver light, a light breeze whisking away the day’s lingering warmth from their skin. Conversation lulled, and the silence was comfortable, until a heavy weight settled onto Kuroko’s heart as his thoughts wandered._  
  
_“Aomine-kun?” he began hesitantly, wary of saying anything to upset him, but also quite worried. “You seemed tired at practice today. Are you feeling okay?”_  
  
_“Yeah, fine,” he answered, but it was a little too automatic, and he knew how fake it sounded, judging by the way he didn’t turn his head to meet the look Kuroko directed at him._  
  
_“…Are you sure?” Kuroko asked quietly after a beat, and he really hated pressing like this, hated prying into people’s privacy, but… this was Aomine, and he knew something was wrong, and he wanted to help._  
  
_Aomine was quiet for a long minute, several times taking a deep breath as if he was about to speak, but sighing instead. After a bit, Kuroko looked up at the sky again instead of studying Aomine’s increasingly troubled face._  
  
_“I—think there’s something wrong with me?” he blurted out eventually, sounding unsure._  
  
_Kuroko blinked in surprise, looking at him again. “What do you mean?”_  
  
_Aomine glanced back briefly but returned his gaze upwards while he spoke. “I’m… tired a lot,” he began, slow and self-conscious. “And, I mean, I get like that when I’m alone at home and not doing anything. I get, like, this sad-tired kind of thing. That always happens. But now… I’m starting to feel like that at school. And during practice. And… well, basically all the time.” He paused, then laughed nervously. “Pretty stupid, huh?”_  
  
_One part stuck out to Kuroko the most. “Why is Aomine-kun sad?” he murmured, brow gently furrowed in concern._  
  
_Aomine shrugged. “I dunno,” he said ambivalently, but after a moment, his face grew troubled again. “I… don’t really know. Is… is that normal?” he asked, finally turning to look at Kuroko._  
  
_Kuroko wasn’t quite sure what to say. Was it normal to be sad for no reason? He had no idea. “…Being sad is normal…?” he offered helplessly._  
  
And the look that had crossed Aomine’s face then, the way his brow uncreased and his gaze grew dull and his lips pressed together into a thin line before relaxing into a vague frown—the way Aomine’s expression closed off to him in that moment haunted Kuroko, became one of the many regrets that flashed through his mind whenever he thought of Aomine and all the things he wished he’d done differently in middle school.  
  
So this time around, he wanted to do it right. At first, things had been a little distant, a little awkward, but the loss to Seirin had softened Aomine’s walls, and Kuroko found they were apt to cave in their most quiet, intimate moments, lying in the dark together, just the two of them.  
  
He still remembered the phone call at two in the morning a few months after the Winter Cup.  
  
_Aomine’s voice was much smaller than usual, and so lost. “I thought everything was gonna be okay. I thought, for once…” He paused and took a breath, and when he continued again his voice was shaking. “…Well, it’s not. It’s not. It’s—it’s getting bad again and I don’t know what to do. Tetsu, I don’t know what to do.”_  
  
_Kuroko rushed over to his house in the middle of the night, and he wouldn’t talk about it later but Aomine cried, and Kuroko held him as if his arms could keep Aomine from coming apart at the seams, and they kissed, for the first time since middle school. He kissed Aomine’s shaking hands fingertip by fingertip, kissed the tears off his cheeks, kissed the sadness from his lips as best he could, and stayed with him the rest of the night._  
  
_“Please talk to me,” Kuroko implored softly after several minutes of calming silence, pressed up against Aomine’s side, their limbs tangled together. He lifted his head from where it rested on Aomine’s shoulder to look up into his face and wipe away the last of his tears as he awaited an answer._  
  
_A weak snort of laughter shook Aomine’s chest, followed by a small residual sniffle. “I just did, what more do you want?” he murmured in response, his tone heavy, but with no anger._  
  
_“All the time, though,” Kuroko specified, cupping Aomine’s cheek and turning his face towards him. “Please stop letting it build up like this.” He paused, choosing his words carefully as he continued. “I want to understand. But… even if I can’t, I want to help. And… I won’t know how unless you talk to me.”_  
  
_Aomine’s arms tightened around him, holding him impossibly closer. “Having you back helps.”_  
  
_A small smile pulled at Kuroko’s lips. “I’m glad,” he said. “What else?”_  
  
_Aomine seemed caught off guard for a moment, blinking in surprise and then adopting a contemplative expressive. That didn’t last long, though, as a sly grin took over. “…Making out with you helps.”_  
  
_Kuroko rolled his eyes, but resolved to get proper answers out of him later. “If you say so,” he replied, indulging Aomine’s stupid, smug smirk with a kiss._  
  
After a solid forty-five minutes of scrubbing, Kuroko finally piled the last of the dishes into the drying rack and headed back up to Aomine’s room. He gazed around at the mounds of clothes with sigh, but thought of Aomine, and set to work.  


* * *

  
_out of practice, where u at?_ Aomine texted Tetsu as he walked out of the locker room, all showered and changed and very ready to see his boyfriend. He got no response, though, even after the ten-minute walk to the train station—which was odd, because Tetsu was usually pretty good at texting back promptly—so he just sent a second message consisting of nothing but question marks, and headed home, figuring that was a good place to start.  
  
He passed his mother on the way upstairs. “Is Tetsu still here?” he asked her.  
  
“Yep, should still be in your room, last I checked,” she answered, then asked him if he wanted anything from the grocery store before heading out the door.  
  
When Aomine walked into this room, the first thing he noticed was Tetsu lying on his bed asleep. Then, he noticed his bed was unusually neatly made, and as he stepped forward to investigate, he almost stumbled over a pile of clothes, causing him to look down and notice the rest of the room.  
  
There were clothes everywhere, as per usual, but instead of haphazard piles tossed everywhere, everything was neatly folded and sorted by type of clothing. A clear path wound from the door to the bed, and as Aomine began to walk it slowly, he also noticed there was no more trash, no more dirty dishes, his backpack was sitting by his desk, packed with all his textbooks, and all his schoolwork and several scavenged pencils were piled on top of the desk. Nearer to the bed, his window was open, a cool breeze circulating fresh air throughout the room, and the mid-afternoon sun shone in, casting a golden glow on Tetsu’s peaceful, sleeping face.  
  
Aomine usually put on a flippant air when called out on his laziness and messiness, and he like to think he really didn’t care about living in a messy room, but… seeing it like this—a reasonable level of organized instead of an irredeemable disaster area—took an enormous weight off his chest. He was usually floating just above rock bottom, but with this small shift, he felt like he could look up and see the light filtering down from the surface. He felt an unexpected rush of emotion as he realized this, and was suddenly grateful that only Tetsu was here.  
  
He followed the path to the end of his bed, climbing onto it and crawling towards Tetsu until he was directly over him. For a moment, he just looked down at him with a fond smile on his face, and leaned down to give him a soft kiss before sitting down on his legs to wake him up.  
  
Tetsu let out the cutest little sleepy groan, his brow knitting briefly in displeasure before his eyes fluttered open. “…Welcome back,” he managed after a moment of squinting tiredly at him.  
  
Aomine wasn’t quite sure where to start, so he went for basic facts. “I went to practice.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“And you just… stayed here. And did this.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“…Why?”  
  
“Because I wanted to.”  
  
Aomine looked down at Tetsu, a vague smile pulling at his lips as he contemplated just how glad he was to have him.  
  
In his silence, Tetsu continued, rubbing the sleep from his eyes before speaking. “I wasn’t sure exactly what was clean or dirty, or where you usually keep all your different kinds of clothes, so I figured it’d be best to just leave them all out so you could put them wherever you want…” He drifted off and added hesitantly, “I… hope it helps, a little.”  
  
Aomine nodded let out a little laugh that may or may not have been masking a dry sob, running his fingers through Tetsu’s hair and cupping his cheek and looking into his eyes and waiting until he felt like he couldn’t possibly hold back the words anymore before he blurted out, “I love you.”  
  
Tetsu’s eyes widened, and Aomine suddenly grew nervous as he realized that, although he’d thought the phrase plenty of times, he’d never said it aloud. But his apprehension didn’t last long—a smile emerged on Tetsu’s face, a wide grin that lit up his eyes and practically stopped Aomine’s racing heart. “I love you, too,” he replied, grabbing at Aomine’s collar, but he didn’t have to pull much because Aomine was already leaning down to kiss him.


End file.
